This morning, at around 8:03 a.m., CNN's Political Editor Mark Preston told CNN Anchor Betty Nyugen that there was an "upside" in the stimulus battle for the Republicans:
In the short term, they lost the battle, Betty. They weren't able to stop this bill from moving through Congress. They weren't able to really alter very much what was happening to this bill as it was going through Congress, except what were they able is they were able to find their voice.Preston's analysis reflects the warped thinking of "The Villagers" (a term coined by Digby who is, without a doubt, one of the brightest and insightful people in the blogosphere.) See, "their voice" was opposing a bill designed to save the economy from collapse. Only in the upside-down world of the inside-baseball pundits like Mark Preston could the GOP's negative tactics be viewed as something of a a victory. Let's just say, after watching Preston, I was annoyed.
But, I took Petey for a walk and an hour later I read Frank Rich's column:
Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.And, Obama should. The Republicans in Congress put their political agenda ahead of the country's needs and they're all high-fiving each other for it. Then, they've got the talking heads, like Mark Preston, seeing an "upside" to their opposition to the economic recovery package. So be it.
But, as Rich also notes, outside the very narrow little sliver of the beltway populated by pundits and GOP members of Congress, the numbers reflect a different take. Let's call it reality:
In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president’s job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) — not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote. While 48 percent of Americans told CBS, Gallup and Pew that they approve of Congressional Democrats, only 31 (Gallup), 32 (CBS) and 34 (Pew) percent could say the same of their G.O.P. counterparts.Such an upside, huh?
To top it off, the Republicans have achieved the rarified status of being brutally mocked by Saturday Night Live:
